Welcome to the Painting Challenge. Here you will find the fabulous, fevered work from miniature painters from around the world. While participants come from every colour, gender, age and nationality, they have at least three things in common: they love miniatures, enjoy a supportive community and they have all taken the Challenge.
This site features the current year's event along with the archives of past Challenges.
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Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Firstly a confession. I don't really like Monty Python. To the 20% who now hate me sorry, but to the 80% who like their comedy to be less bloody smug, you know who you are, there is no shame in admitting it.

Anyway back to the point. Having basically finished the ACW, even I was getting bored of the same layouts on the photos, I purchased loads of figs over Christmas. These are the 1st I've painted up and they are 8 Mtd Carolingian Warriors by Gripping Beast. They were a bargain in the North Star sale (£9 I think) even with the massive hands.

They are OK and helped me to tweak with the flesh shading, still a little orange but picking out cheek bones and noses works well, lighting on photo still dodgy though, Shields are obviously hand done and I quite like a couple of them. I've also just noticed that the horse above is missing an eye.Overall they are a little rushed as I like to start and finish a unit in a couple of days (note to self paint smaller units). Moving forward I'm going to slow down my rate to improve further and play with the painting styles. I want to tweak my style to better incorporate the things I've learnt and try to emulate some of the cool things done by others. At the moment I still paint solid blocks of colour and then shade later. Want to play with washes to build up the colour, at moment I only do this on the legs of bay horses.

I´m here, at last, with a new entry. I have been a bit busy these days, so my painting list is full of "must-be-done" notes...

First one, my second figure for the Fantasy project. He is a true old guard, a 28mm resin dwarf from Scibor Miniatures mounted in on their wonderful bases. A pleasure to paint, really.

Second one, a Goblin "champion" also from Scibor Miniatures. He is going to be Gorb, a mighty captain under the command of The Prophet.

Third, more (yes, more) SCW Brigadistas from Empress Miniatures. I would like to have finished an AT gun than rest from this commission, but it is in the "must-be-done" group...

Fourth, Lance, the first Dr Newton´s assistant. Another wonderful miniature from Pulp Figures.

This secondary project, born thanks to The Challenge, is gaining steam. I have received a lot of natives and other figures from Bob Murch, and I have the first cultist ready to be painted (he was going to participate in this week´s Bonus Challenge, but... he is in the must-be-done group).

As many will know by now, GregB has re-introduced 20mm WWII to the Fawcett crew (quite possibly, God's one true WWII gaming scale!). So, wanting to help add to the gaming possibilities, I bought some items from the Plastic Soldier Company's "Black Friday" sale.

Along with a Rubicon Panther G(I wanted a PzIV, but they were sold out),
I picked up a box of 20mm PSC T-34's, some 20mm PzIV's, and some 20mm
Shermans and a Firefly to do a unit to support my Canadians (more on that, if my Warbases order arrives before the Challenge winds up!)

These
kits were pretty quick to build, but being plastic, they were a bit
light and I didn't want them bouncing around on the tabletop. I
super-glued three mid-sized washers into the bottom of the hulls for
added weight, and mounted all of them on plastic-card (I started
basing my 15mm vehicles, after FoW started releasing vehicles with
cast-on bases - they just looked better with all the based infantry!).And
as much as I love the Late Fall/Early Spring camo and basing GregB did
on his models, I thought we should have some options for doing battles
in other times of the year - so I went for simple "Steppe" grasslands
basing and paint. The bases were great too, as I was able to depict the
churned up turf of the tank tracks! It's just Liquitex Resin Sand
smeared on the bases, with "track ruts" left open. Then, paint and
flock as desired. I think the effect turned out quite nicely.Oh, and all the turret numbers and slogans were painted - no decals (didn't have time to order any - and it's pretty straight-forward for the Russians!).

The
great thing about these T34 kits, is that they come with BOTH turret
options! This allows you to build both the '76 versions, or the '85
versions.

Here are the same kits, with the '85 turrets.

And finally, all the components of these kits!

These
are great kits - good detail, pretty quick assembly, and a decent
price! I would heartily recommend them, if you're looking to do some
20mm Russians.

Now... where is that Warbases order? --I have some FAA Russians to paint as Tank Riders ("Tankovy Desantniki") to go with these tanks!

Thanks for looking!From Curt:Great looking T34s Kevin! I like the hand painted numbers and slogan - ace work! (and I'm adding a few extra points for this and the additional turrets)With this entry Kevin has breached his initial points target of 300. Congratulations Kev, great work! Let me know what you'd like to target running in to the conclusion of the Challenge.

I have completed my 2 ACW brigades (pause for applause). When I started the Challenge many lifetimes ago I planned to paint the Harry T. Hays Brigade of Early's Division of Ewell's Brigade circa 1863 and Graham's 1st Brigade, 1st Division, III Corps. I had purchased 2 brigade sets of Perry's plastic 28mm ACW infantry with 2 artillery pieces for £45 each about 12 months ago and had based them, undercoated them and then hid them. In addition to these I had a box of zouaves and I purchased a box of cavalry over Christmas.

The Challenge gave me the opportunity to paint them otherwise they would have stayed there. I thought that it would take me all the challenge but I have finished them already and greatly improved my skills and standards.

Firstly I finished the 4 artillery pieces, 2 each.They are nominally the Louisiana Guard Artillery and the 1st New Jersey Light Artillery. I have added spare officers to command each unit from the infantry boxes. There are far too many officers in boxes and I've been turning them in mad scientists and fighting vicarsetc .

Next I needed to finish the commanders. The brigades each came with a mounted general but they were Stickles and Pickett so needed some conversion. Hays just needed a beard trim but Graham has an mad beard that I made out of the packing material, that came with the artillery, dyed black. This worked well but picture is rubbish, need better lighting and better camera.

BG Charles Graham

BG Harry T Hays.

These are the forces. My house has a design fault such that the painting room has the head space for the stairs in it. Seller was very apologetic and price was lower than similar houses. It is a 4x3 foot waist high flat space that is perfect for skirmish gaming on. I didn't let on how delighted I was.

The rebel brigade has 1 unit less than the Union but I have enough figs left to paint reinforcements, once I've picked an interesting unit. I also have dismounted cavalry to paint - 30 figs to go.

I'll have to find other things to paint now but have loads of things sitting and staring at me.

Thanks for all the help.

From Curt:

Great entry! I particularly liked the final shots of your ACW collection to date. That is an impressive amount of work and a testimony to the hobby pressure-cooker that the Challenge encourages.

I'm still adding to my Blitzkrieg Germans and this week saw me finishing two more Support Weapons teams and some HQ selections. All figures are Warlord Games again. Beeing metal figures they originally feature heads from Warlords 'Seperate Head System' but as I didn't like them, due to their over exaggerated facial expressions, I used left overs from my plastic Blitzkrieg Germans.

First of all is the "5cm leichter Granatwerfer 36". This light mortar was introduced into the Wehrmacht in 1936 as platoon support weapon. Production was stopped in 1941and officially removed from the frontline as it's general performance was deemed to be insufficient. Still it was pretty popular with the common soldiers and therefore remained in active service till the very end.

Second is the MG 34 Heavy Machine Gun. The MG 34 was also introduced in 1936 and was superseded by the MG 42 which was both cheaper and easier to manufacture. Both weapons were so called multifunctional machine guns.For the light machine gun role they were mounted onto a bipod and used as squad support weapons. In this role it had a maximum range of 2000m.For the heavy machine gun role however it was mounted onto a tripod and had a range of up to 3000m respectively 3500m for indirect fire.

While the MG 42 had a theoretical rate of fire of 1500 rounds per minute the MG 34 was 'only' capable of 800 - 900 rounds per minute.

Next is the Zugführer (Platoon Leader) and his personal aide. The latter will be promoted to Truppführer (Squad Leader) once I paint up another squad.

And last but not least are the Arilleriebeobachter (Artillery Forward Observer) and the Sanitäter (Medic). For each of them I plan to paint up an assistant in the future.

If I'm not totally wrong this entry should give me 37.5 points to add to my tally.From Curt:Stunning work again Nick (and interesting info on these German light squad weapons). Great job!